Need a second convertible seat. . .help please?

[kitmama]

Hey! Well, Mr. Cheeks is just shy of 20 lbs (may already be there, with the way he's been eating this month!) So I need to get him out of the Snugride. Big brother is still RF in his Roundabout, so we need a second convertible seat.

We have been happy with the Roundabout, so I was just going to get another like it. But I'm wondering if there's anything better available that wasn't around two years ago.

Also, there are some other issues I want to consider: our main carseat vehicle is a Subaru Forester, which is rather smallish. (Our second vehicle is an Infiniti G20, but we rarely put the seats in there). Currently both children are RF, with the infant seat in the center and the Roundabout rear passenger side. That's a squeeze. Two Roundabouts will not fit that way. We need to occasionally seat an adult back there, too. So I will have to either buy something narrower than a Roundabout, or turn Littleman FF.

If I have to turn Littleman FF, he will have to be FF outboard (for montessori's pick-up/drop-off). Do I need to have him in a seat with side impact protection?

Thanks you SO much for the help! I want to pick the safest possible seat for our circumstances.

[momtoB]

Here's a site that has car seat measurements: http://www.carseatdata.org/csnumbers.html#convertibles

I was going to suggest the Cosco Scenera 5-pt but it looks like when they made some modificiations and changed it from the Touriva to the Scenera it got a little wider. :( If you can still find a new Touriva somewhere (they've been discontinued) then you might look at one of those. Otherwise, your choices are narrowed down to:

Evenflo Tribute, Graco Comfort Sport, Safety 1st Intera, which are all narrower than the RA but I don't think any of them are highly recommended, unfortunately.

As far as SIP goes if you need to turn your older ds f/fing, I would suggest a Britax Boulevard which has True SIP headwings. More importantly though, is that the f/fing seat is top-tethered which really helps with limiting forward head excursion in a collision. If you get your older guy a new Blvd, then you can just pass the RA down to your younger ds.

hth,
Cheryl
ds-4/21/03 r/fing in a Britax Blvd

[Kat_Mom2D_J_andRuthie]

how old is Littleman and how much does he weigh?

my first instinct would be to get the older child a boulevard, but with the space constraints in the car, I wouldn't want to turn him ff unless he's close to the rf limits.

my second instinct would be to get the older child the sunshine kids radian, if it will fit in your car, as it is the narrowest thing out there.

[kitmama]

Thank you both for the suggestions.

Littleman is 2 1/2 (30 mo) and just over 25 lbs. He's a pretty small guy- it will probably take us awhile to get to 33 lbs. We'd prefer to keep him RF if possible.

The Sunshine Kids Radian- don't I recall that it's not very well rated? I'm wary of carseats that fold- it seems a seat would be much safer without the stress points created by joints. And I seem to remember reading that it is difficult to get a secure fit. I am no expert though, and it IS narrow. Perhaps it's worth looking into! Do you have insights about this seat?

I need to get to a store and see if they will let me install different seats in the Forester till I find something that works. Babies R Us probably doesn't carry all the options I should consider, though.